1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the field of electronic commerce, and more particularly, to negotiating the exchange of consumer information with a merchant.
2. Description of the Related Art
The buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet, commonly referred to as electronic commerce (e-commerce) has continued to experience rapid growth as an industry. In the face of ever increasing competition, some have tried to gain a competitive advantage by modeling e-commerce transactions after typical human interactions. This business strategy can attract consumers by providing them with a method of attaining a favorable price rather than paying a single fixed price. One such example is the on-line auction format. Another example is U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,288 to Robert S. Solomon (the '288 patent). The '288 patent provides a method and system which patterns an electronic transaction after conventional merchant and consumer haggling in a bazaar-like atmosphere. By successfully haggling with the merchant and gauging the merchant's emotional state, the consumer can negotiate a favorable price for a particular good or service. In dealing with the consumer, however, the merchant can rely upon past dealings with the consumer as well as solicited consumer information to formulate suitable counter-offers. Though the aforementioned systems allow consumers to deal for a favorable product price, still, consumers are limited to making monetary counter-offers. The consumers cannot offer the merchant anything of value other than money.
Another important business strategy relating to e-commerce is the acquisition of consumer information. The acquisition of consumer information allows merchants to significantly increase sales through targeted advertising and other sales techniques such as cross-selling, up-selling, and data mining. Consequently, many merchants generally have tried to obtain increasingly larger amounts of consumer information. In fact, the sale of consumer information has evolved into an industry in and of itself. The one party that actually owns this information, however, namely the consumer, is routinely excluded from participating in the sale of this information. Moreover, consumers have little control over the proliferation of their own information.
Many consumers have become increasingly sensitive to the proliferation of private information, especially over the Internet. While consumers can be willing to provide particular information such as a name, address, and credit card information necessary to complete a financial transaction, the giving of other private information such as one's salary, insurance, or other personal financial information is generally viewed as being non-essential to the completion of a financial transaction. Oftentimes, the mere inquiry into such private information can be viewed as an invasion of privacy which can alienate the consumer from the merchant. Accordingly, many consumers do not wish to disclose private information.
Many e-commerce sites, however, not only ask consumers for private information, but can predicate a transaction upon receiving that information. In consequence, merchants can lose a sale by demanding private consumer information for a given transaction. Additionally, if merchants persist in asking for sensitive consumer information, or if the consumers are uneasy about the manner in which the merchant uses acquired information, the consumer can develop a distrust for the merchant and cease to visit the e-commerce Web site.
Some aspects of consumer privacy relating to e-commerce have been addressed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C has developed the Platform for Privacy Preferences 1.0 (P3P1.0) Specification, which is available at <http://www.w3.org/TR/P3P/>. The P3P1.0 Specification specifies an automated way in which users can gain more control over the use of personal information by the Web sites that they visit. Generally, P3P standardizes particular aspects of a privacy policy of a Web site. A P3P enabled Web site can provide the privacy policy information to a P3P enabled browser. Consequently, the consumer can choose whether to interact with the Web site based upon the published privacy policy. This implementation, however, does not provide the consumer with an ability to negotiate or otherwise alter the terms of the privacy policy of the Web site.